Kamala's Compendium: Clear Light of Day- Anita Desai

“‘And then the British built New Delhi and moved everything out. Here we are left rocking on the backwaters, getting duller and greyer, I suppose. Anyone who isn’t dull and grew goes away—to New Delhi, to England, to Canada, the Middle East. They don’t come back.’” P.5
 -Ultimately, the main allegorical struggle of the book as well as for the country and, of course, these characters: can we move forward and change and still belong? What will we lose and will it be too much? Who have we left behind and sent out to represent us? Some great questions, I could definitely use these for mine.

 “Her mouth tingled with longing to bite into that hard astringent flesh under the green rind. She wondered if her girls would do it when they arrived to spend the holidays here. No, they would not. Much traveled, brought up in embassies, fluent in several languages, they were far too sophisticated for such rustic pleasures, she knew, and felt guilty over her own lack of that desirable quality.” P.11
 -Perfect embodiment of what home, as a concept brings out, also of Tara’s fragility.

 “She herself had been taught, by her husband and by her daughters, to answer questions, to make statements, to be frank and precise. They would have none of these silences and shadows. Here things were left unsaid, undone. It was what they called the ‘Old Delhi decadence.’ She knotted her fingers together in an effort to break it.” P.13
-Man, so ridiculously, personally familiar. Clash between new/western ways of communication with old/other ways. The mode of communication being that the unspoken is the most sacred, what stupid people are referring to when they call Asian people “quiet.” But all the same the inability for these characters and families to resolve anything and move forward. A really nice move early on to teach us how to read all of the interactions between family members and also to show the kind of action that will be taking place in the book.

 “All her life Tara had experienced that fear—her father had killed her mother. Even after Aunt Mira and Bim and Raja had explained to her what it was he did, what he kept doing daily, Tara could not rid herself of the feel of that original stab of suspicious. Sometimes, edging up close to her mother, she would study the flabby, floury skin punctured with a hundred minute needle-holes, and catch her breath in an effort not to cry out. Surely these were the signs of death, she felt, not of healing?” p.23
 -Mystery, planting early seeds. This never panned out like I had hoped, but this scene left me perfectly unsettled, perfectly attuned to Tara’s intuitions and makes such good use of what Bim later refers to as children’s ability to grasp a mood and atmosphere. There is such much about the “pattern” or “web” of their family in here.

 “ ‘Isn’t it strange how life won’t flow, like a river, but moves in jumps, as if it were held back by locks that are opened now and then to let it jump forwards in a kind of flood? There are these long still stretches—nothing happens—each day is exactly like the other—plodding, uneventful—and then suddenly there is a crash—mighty deeds take place—momentous events—even if one doesn’t know it at the time—and then life subsides again into the backwaters till the next push, the next flood?’ “ p.42
 -A sort of key to how we are to read this book’s structure, I think, as well as the history/narrative of the new independent India and its “children,” as we may take these characters to be. Also one of the few places with such interrupted thoughts/sentences, feels very present, human, alive, don’t forget the fun of discovery.

 “He had a very honest face, she decided, painfully honest, like a peeled vegetable.” P.69
 -My favorite kind of sentence, totally something I would write. Nice use of relevatory “she decided,” gives this some momentum and sense of action. Also peeled vegetable being the most precise, lovely image for the weakness Bim so detests

 “Bakul did always bore her: it was his smoothness of manner; there was no roughness that could catch the interest, snag it.” P.80 -Awesome example of what makes Bim a good protagonist/mind to lead us, as readers is it not these snags that also make the story valuable? “The tea party was of course a mistake and Bim scowled and cursed herself for having softened and let herself in for what was a humiliation and a disaster for everyone concerned.” P.90
 -Great intro to a scene, sets up distinct expectation, roots in a point of view, and allows for us to read the subtle turns of the particular disaster rather than track/read for the outcome of the tea party. The subtle turns being key, since this is the kind of unraveling that happens in such small actions and reactions, that it would be unnoticeable to the reader as “action” otherwise.

 “As they grew into adolescence it seemed to Raja, Bim and Tara that they were suffocating in some great grey mass through which they tried to thrust as Raja had thrust through the thorny hedge, and emerge into a different atmosphere. How as it to be different? Oh, they thought, it should have colour and event and company be rich and vibrant with possibilities. Only they could not—the greyness was so massed as to baffle them and defeat their attempts to fight through.” P.120
 -Both an allegory for throwing off colonial rule and attempting to self-govern, to enrich onself, as well as a perfectly apt feeling of what it means for these characters to grow claustrophobic in this isolated family. Nice use of actual action to directly address theme.

 “She wanted to ask for forgiveness and understanding, not simply forgetfulness and incomprehension. But neither Bim nor Bakul was interested. They were talking about the Misra family,” p.150
-The reason they remain stuck in the past, reliving and re-encountering the exact same tensions and problems that have lived with them since youth. Goes directly back to p.13, that there is no new understanding ever gleaned from new interactions, only old narrations of the past and even the future, that the only say aloud the same old things.

 “If such an unimaginable phenomenon could take place, then surely they would remain flawed, damaged for life. The wholeness of the pattern, its perfection, would be gone.” P.180
-The ultimate fear of change, of loss, of the desire not to let go and resolve. A really beautiful line, I wish this image had persisted throughout as a stronger motif, it’s a great one for a family.